The opioid epidemic continues to claim lives, disrupt families and challenge communities, but nurses are hardly standing idly by. In many settings, they are creating solutions, implementing new programs, and driving change that is good for nurses, patients, health systems and communities.

What Nurses Know About Opioids

University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Nursing

Forward Nursing cover story, Summer 2019

By now, the story of the opioid epidemic is brutally familiar and exhaustively documented: where it began, why it took hold and how it rages on. Although overdose deaths continue to rise—opioids accounted for two thirds of the 66,632 overdose deaths in 2016, an overall number up 21.5 percent from the previous year and now the leading cause of death in Americans under 50—the public health response is gaining traction.